


A Letter To L From J

by Gildedmuse



Series: 11 Painful Partings [4]
Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: A Phrase Which Here Means, Angst, Angst and Humor, Canonical Character Death, Challenge Response, Epistolary, Gen, It Is Lemony Snicket After All, No Beta We Die As All Of Us Both Villain & Volunteer Alike Eventually Will, Originally Posted on LiveJournal, Pre-Canon, Vexatious Featured Departure, Villainous Fanfic Decisions, a letter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-25 16:09:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18577924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gildedmuse/pseuds/Gildedmuse
Summary: It saddens me, my dear L, to be the bearer of such sad news; a phrase that here means "the only person left who knows how to contact you and thus is responsible for updating you on the terrible tragedy that has befallen B and her children."





	A Letter To L From J

**Author's Note:**

> [Originally posted to LJ in 2009 as part of an attempt to do a "12 Days Of Fandom" challenge. The first part was 12 Drunken Drabbles. Each of the 11 story is a different fandom but has a similar theme: Painful Partings]

**A Letter To L From J**

  
Dearest L,  
  
I have sent this letter care of V.F.D. and can only hope that on the fourteenth of October at exactly 3:19 in the afternoon you will be standing seven paces to the right of the statue of Samuel Clemens outside of the local print show on Marque Avenue as we arranged. If you have received this note, as I hope you have, then you already know that I am not able to attend this meeting due to outside circumstances - a phrase meaning "terrible dangerous things have been happening and have forced me on the run." If that is not the case, however, and you never read this letter then I simply hope that you are anywhere that is not jail, in a fire, or inside a grave as those seem to be the most common places I have found people as of late.  
  
As I am sure you have been made aware, many unfortunate events have begun to unfold, much in the way of a terribly long letter that has been stuffed very tightly into an envelope and which you have been forced to read despite the horrible poetry contained within. Indeed, dear L, I can not even speak of some of the most dreadful of deeds that have ensued in your absence. If you are as intelligent as I know you to be, perhaps you will have already known to stop reading this letter and therefore never have to learn of the villainous plots of setting fires, a nefarious case of vaticide, and the vile crime of throwing away a perfectly good book after only one reading. Worse yet - and here I implore you dear L to rip this letter up and fed it to some sort of fish, salmon, perhaps - many of these things (although not the last) have been happening in the house of B.  
  
I am so very, very sorry if you made the mistake as to continue this far, but I am afraid that what you have read here is absolutely true.  
  
I can only hope that after revealing such distressing news I may comfort you by telling you this: that the three Baudelaire children (whom I call refer to as V, K and S as our enemies are very talented arsonist but very poor codebreakers) are all safe. However, I cannot be certain for how long they shall be kept this way or where they are now or even if V, K, and S were ever really safe even before the fire. Indeed, I am beginning to believe that in a world as wicked as our own, that no one is ever safe even for a moment and even with a mother as wonderful as B. For it seems to me now that even the kindest parents with the biggest library cannot keep fires from spreading.

  
I am afraid I must hurry and finish, for it seems that the decoy I have set up down at the theater so that the audience looked full and not at all like an empty auditorium where authors would place decoys so that they can sneak off to write letters instead of watch poorly preformed theater are no longer working, and I am fairly certain I can hear the tapping sound of a one wooden leg quickly approaching. So I must leave you with this admonition, which is in this case means “a warning of the many villainous persons that will soon be chasing you as they are already chasing me”:  
  
This world, dear L, is filled with many types of people. There are those who read and those who do not, those who set fires and those who put them out. And sometimes the people that you think are one type are actually the other, and people may be one who likes books but sets fires or puts out the fires set by others but does not enjoy a good book, no matter how well written and on what subject. And sometimes, in strange cases, a person can be all of them at once and then none of them the very next day. I am sorry to say, my dearest L, that there is not always a way of telling them apart, and that we can only hope that we figure it out before the situation becomes desperate - a word which here means “exactly as mine has already become”.  
  
Keep hope, my dear L, and more importantly keep on the run for I fear this corner of the world is no longer safe for us or for anyone wanting only to live in a world safe from dangerous fires.  
  
\- J  



End file.
